The Complexity of Life Doesn’t Prove Creationism

If god is such a brilliant designer, why did he make everything needlessly complicated? This question occurred to me after a brief conversation with a young-earth creationist. She made a post on Facebook about how the complexity of the immune system suggests an intelligent designer. You see, everyday the human body is attacked by countless microbes that would easily kill us if not for the incredibly elaborate immune system. Therefore god.

First of all, I don’t understand the logic of explaining something complex with something even more complex (god). But that tactic doesn’t seem to be very effective, so I tried a different approach. I said,

“Interesting, but then you have to wonder why God created microbes in the first place. If he hadn’t, there would be no need for an immune system. Or did the microbes come along after the fall in the Garden of Eden? If so, then did God create the microbes as a sort of punishment (why bother doing that?), or did sin somehow cause microbes to appear? And either way, did God add the immune system to humans after the fall, or did he create it in the first place knowing the fall would happen? So many questions, so few answers.”

She responded that it’s possible some microbes turned “bad” after the fall and that this is when God added the immune system. But to her credit, she admitted this is just speculation and that there’s a lot we still don’t know. I responded,

“I agree there’s plenty we don’t know. But you have to wonder how exactly sin would cause good microbes to turn bad. Since there’s no way to measure sin, there’s no test we can perform to see how this would happen, so it’s pure speculation. And if God created the bad microbes himself, why would he do that knowing he would also have to create an immune system? Why create either of them in the first place? It all seems unnecessarily complicated. I would be more inclined to believe creationism if the human body were inexplicably simple.”

Unfortunately she didn’t reply again, but I want to expand on that last point a little bit. Creationists say the complexity of the human body indicates there’s a creator. But actually, a very simple human body that magically works would be more indicative of a creator.

Imagine how incredible it would be if the human body were completely hollow. How would it move without muscles? How would it stay upright without a skeleton? How would it think without a brain? And how would it digest food without a stomach? Well it wouldn’t, unless of course there was some all-powerful designer who made it work. If food magically transformed into energy without the need for a stomach, intestines, and disgusting bowel movements, I would be much more impressed and would even believe that some sort of intelligent being must be responsible. After all, a body like that couldn’t possibly evolve.

But as it is, the human body is so unnecessarily complex, fragile, inefficient, and full of vestigial organs that I don’t see how it could possibly be intelligently designed. The complexity of the human body is what we should expect to see if evolution is true.